Art in Review

By KEN JOHNSON

Published: August 21, 2009

SCULPTURE SHOW

Sperone Westwater

415 West 13th Street, Manhattan

Through Sept. 4

This show of sculptures from the early 1980s to the present is like a walk-in contemporary art textbook. With the exception of a large spray-painted picture of bison with hooves drawn on three-dimensional boxes by Mario Merz, each piece has impressive presence.

The rugged masculinity of Richard Long's 13-foot circle of Texas sandstone chunks contrasts nicely with the femininity of Charles LeDray's ''Clothesline,'' which consists of handmade doll-scale pieces of clothing strung end to end.

Tom Sachs's stack of cast bronze car batteries does a Neo-Pop spin on Donald Judd-style Minimalism, while Bertozzi & Casoni's glazed ceramic and painted bronze representation of a toucan perched on an oil drum puts trompe l'oeil realism to the service of political commentary. Another feat of realism is Evan Penny's oversized man's head that is vertically stretched as if by a funhouse mirror.

Wim Delvoye's diminutive bulldozer made of stainless-steel sheets laser-cut into medieval-style filigree patterns has ecclesiastical architectural elements that turn it into a mobile, industrial-age cathedral.

Malcolm Morley's life-size sculpture of a motorcyclist jumping through a ring of fire is full of boyish energy, but Bruce Nauman's ''Good Boy Bad Boy'' steals the show. A man on one monitor and a woman on another simultaneously and with great passion recite lines like ''I'm having sex. You are having sex. We are having sex. This is sex.'' They do the same for eating, defecating, working, living and dying. You don't know whether to laugh or cry. KEN JOHNSON